


Clean Is Not Enough

by Merixcil



Category: Reservoir Dogs (1992), Taxi Driver (1976)
Genre: Coming of Age, Gen, M/M, Period Typical Everything, Sex Work
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 13:21:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29760264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merixcil/pseuds/Merixcil
Summary: Freddy Newandyke in the big city, no need for his parents’ shit or his friends or anybody. He’s here. On his own. He’s going to make it work.
Relationships: Mr. Orange & Mr. White (Reservoir Dogs), Mr. Orange & Travis Bickle
Comments: 6
Kudos: 7





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> SO 
> 
> Here goes me posting something I have poured my heart and soul into that may not resonate with anyone else. If you're here I hope you will at least give it a chance. 
> 
> Some notes before we get started:  
> \- New chapters will be posted every few days according to a mysterious schedule only my moods can determine  
> \- Tags will be updated as the story progresses  
> \- I have started out tagging for non-con and underage happenings. There is no explicit on screen sex in this fic but there is a fair amount of it happening just off screen. None of it is portrayed as explicitly good and most of it is shown to be extremely bad.  
> \- At no point will I clarify Freddy's age 
> 
> I ask that you mind the tags and stop reading if this story starts to upset you.

The rain in New York is like nothing he’s ever seen. Within seconds of stepping off the bus Freddy is drenched, stumbling through puddles in sneakers that were on their way out when he left Bakersfield. Now that he’s here, the bag slung over his shoulder feels way too small to contain the building blocks of a new life. The thousands strong hoard swells and eddies around him, insisting upon currents that tourists and newcomers would be fool to think they could navigate.

“I need a hotel.” Freddy announces as he falls into the back of a cab. A yellow model with a sticker on the bumper proclaiming the driver’s loyalty to his favourite local radio station. It should feel like stepping into a movie, but all he’s thinking about is how good it is to get out of the rain.

The driver watches him in the rear view, wincing as Freddy soaks the seats. “You got any money, kid?”

“Yeah. I got like eighty bucks.”

The driver kisses his teeth and shakes his head. His hair’s so tightly gelled that it barely moves with the motion. “Downtown’s no good for you. You gotta be up in Harlem of the Bronx if that’s all you got.”

“Eighty bucks ain’t nothing.”

“It’s a thirty dollar ride to ninety sixth street, and I don’t know that part of town well enough to drop you some place you could stay. Which means I either gotta drive you around till we find somewhere or kick you out and let you drown.”

“How much is a place?”

“You’ll be lucky to find somewhere decent for less than twenty five bucks a night.”

Freddy’s pockets are growing lighter by the second. “I can handle less than half decent.”

“Whatever you say, kid.” The driver rolls his eyes and starts the engine, raising the flag on the metre as he pulls away from the rank.

Through rain mottled windows, Freddy watches the city grow around him. The fuzzy pictures in the papers and the recreations you see on TV don’t do it justice. The movement, the colour, the lights, like the pages of Spider-man come to life. The thick cloud cover means that even in the middle of the day the theatres are burning through their electricity bills to keep front of house lit up. When they stop at a set of traffic lights, he wipes away the steam fogging up his window to get a better look at what’s playing.

_XXX Girls_

_Live Nude Girls_

_Girls Girls Girls_

Freddy sits back. “Is that…”

“Nudey theatres.” The driver’s voice curdles over the words. “And porno cinemas. You wanna stay out of those places, y’hear? They’ll rot your brain and eat through that eighty dollars of yours real quick.”

“You ain’t my dad.” Freddy tells him. He’s probably right, but the idea of being able to walk into one of a dozen different pornos whenever he wants is enough to set his heart racing.

The driver shrugs. “I s’pose not.” He’s thick set, with a funny bulbous nose and enough laugh lines to let you know that he’s really lived some of the years he’s got under his belt. There’s a ramrod straightness to his spine that reminds Freddy of his grandfather’s military bearing and though he’s already gone grey it’s not hard to imagine him holding his own in a fight. “Where you from, kid?”

“California.”

“No shit? You’ve come a long way.”

“Yeah. Well.”

The dead space in the conversation crackles and Freddy wants to barrel out of the car right there in the middle of the road. The driver nods slowly, trying to build a picture of his own around Freddy’s carefully rehearsed lack of detail. Let him fucking try.

The lights change and the cab sets off at a crawl. Freddy holds his breath and hopes that will be the end of it between here and Harlem.

Freddy winds up staying in a real shithole. Complete with leaking ceiling and whore fucking her John in the next room.

“Twenty-two bucks a night.” The girl on the front desk informs him. She’s scrawny, with an afro three times a size of her head and lips painted the colour of toffee apples. She looks him up and down with an expression that could be anything from ‘what’s this white boy doing here?’ to ‘he better not track too much water down the hallway.’

The cab driver had dropped him off with a warning that this was a Black neighbourhood, and he ought to watch his back. Freddy had wanted to thank him for the ten dollars he knocked off the fare, but his tongue got stuck and the guy was gone before he found the words. He sits in his room, on a bed that’s little more than a mattress and tries to rationalise what he should do next.

If the weather’s gonna be this shitty then he’s going to need to make getting a proper coat and pair of boots his top priority. He’s paid up for two nights here so that covers him while he tries to get a job. Once he’s got some cash in hand he can start thinking about finding somewhere more permanent and maybe somewhere along the way he can get something to eat. His stomach rumbles at the very thought. He’d grabbed a burger from a roadside stop back in Pennsylvania but that was more than ten hours ago. He cautiously bumps food up to his top priority.

The leather jacket he had arrived in is hung on the back of the door, leaving a puddle in the entryway as it tries to dry out. The hotel sits over a launderette and Freddy can’t stop thinking about the water falling through the floorboards to smother everyone’s clean washing. In return, the steam from down below has black mould growing in the corners, but at least it’s warm. He should have swiped one of his dad’s suits before he left. Heading to the east coast in a white singlet and leather duster was a bad idea and packing nothing more to wear than a Hawaiian shirt and some clean underwear was a worse one. Freddy debates changing into dry socks, but his shoes are so wet that it’s not going to make a lick of difference once he’s got them on.

Food. Dry clothes. A place to stay. Those theatres with the naked girls. Freddy grins despite the cab driver’s warning. He has sixteen dollars to his name and two days to find a job. Freddy Newandyke in the big city, no need for his parents’ shit or his friends or anybody. He’s here. On his own. He’s going to make it work.

Freddy heads down the hall to the shared bathroom and waits for a rakishly thin man with densely matted hair to finish taking a shit. He relieves himself, and then uses the hand towel sitting by the sink to take the edge off the rain still clinging to his skin. When he comes up he’s facing himself in the mirror, water dripping down his overlarge nose, blonde hair stained dark with the damp. “They don’t know shit. You’re not going to get hurt. You’re super cool.”

Burgers just taste better in New York and this run of the mill cheeseburger eaten in a diner with worse hygiene standards than the hotel is the proof. Freddy means to linger over it, but it slips down his throat in a matter of minutes and he’s left to pick sadly over his fries as he tries to draw out the time before he has to leave. This place is a couple of blocks over from where he’s staying and despite the cabbie’s warning that this was a tough neighbourhood, Harlem seems to be filled with shops and restaurants and people moving through the streets like they’re here on purpose. He can’t imagine anyone being so content to have wound up in Bakersfield.

“Can I borrow a pen?” He asks the boy sitting bored behind the cash register.

The boy scowls at him. “Whatchu want a pen for?”

“So I can write something down.”

“Pens are a quarter.”

“Please, I just need it for five minutes.”

“And maybe I just need a quarter.”

Freddy shakes his head. “Never mind.”

“Ray! You better not be tormenting no customers when I get out there.” A voice bellows from the kitchen.

The kid moves from bored to defensive, curling in on himself as he calls back. “I weren’t, Pops.”

“Well it sure as hell sounds like you are.” The kid’s father emerges, a portly Black man striding to the till with his hair tied up in a rag and Che Guavara on his t-shit. He looks from the kid to Freddy. “You want something?”

“I just wanted to borrow a pen.”

The father snatches up a pen from behind the counter which he passes to Freddy before smacking the kid upside the head. “See, Ray? It’s not that hard.”

“He mighta stole it!”

“Aw hell no. Scrawny guy like that got no business stealing our pens. Ain’t that right, white boy?”

“Right.” Freddy smiles up at the father. “Thanks.”

“You best be giving that back or we ain’t gonna serve you again.”

Pen in hand, Freddy stretches out a paper napkin at his table and writes down all the things he knows how to do and all the jobs he could do with his expertise. Top of the list is ‘Theatre Attendant’. Both because it doesn’t require you to know shit about anything to be good at it, and because sitting on his ass watching creeps pour in for a matinee showing of the latest French arthouse film in town sounds like a pretty good way to earn a living. After that he’s got something about comic book shops, though he’d have a job finding one, and washing dishes. If it all goes to shit he could always ask the launderette downstairs if they need any help.

It’s hard to get a sense of the time of day when the rain won’t let up, but outside the streetlamps flicker on and a gaggle of girls pour into the burger joint. They’re carrying ratty umbrellas but they look like they spent time on their outfits. Freddy’s eyes catch on the short skirts and low cut tops they’re all sporting like a uniform and he doesn’t notice that he’s eaten his last fry.

“Pick your jaw up off the floor.” The father scolds when Freddy goes to hand the pen back. The kid, Ray, has been banished out back.

“Sorry.” Freddy smirks.

The father shakes his head. “Boy, you ain’t got no money for a pen. Don’t go thinking you’ve got money for them.” And he nods towards the girls.

Money for them. With the thigh high boots and the thick caked makeup. Hiding their hair under broken umbrellas to keep it out of the rain but most of them are soaked up to their knees from the splashes of passing cars.

“You’re new in town, right?”

“Fresh off the bus.”

“Then you got some learning to do.”

“You can say that again.” The pen is passed back and Freddy knows he should leave but he can’t stand the thought of being caught in the rain again. “You got any jobs going here?”

“Nuh uh, no way. This is a family run business and that ain’t no business of yours.”

“I can work out back or something. But I really need a job and-“

“Listen, I can ask around, see if anyone knows anything about jobs going. But there’s no job here.” The father pulls a scrap of paper from behind the till and starts writing something down. “What’s your name?”

“Freddy.”

“Nice to meet you, Freddy. I’m Holdaway.” And he offers a hand to shake. “Where you staying?”

“The place above the launderette round the corner.”

“Shit. We gotta get you out of there. Come back this time tomorrow and we’ll see what I can do.”

“Thanks, man. I appreciate it.”

Freddy shuffles out of the burger joint and the wind rips at his sodden leather jacket. He heads down the street in the direction of a cinema he passed earlier, assuring himself that he’s just going in to ask about a job. There are girls crowded on the curb outside, backlit by the gleaming signs advertising softcore pornography, a vision in wet denim and thin cotton. They look like they would rather be anywhere else and Freddy wants to ask them if they’re cold, if they’re hungry, if they’re scared, but as soon as he locks eyes with one she’s leaning forward, trying to slip into his personal space.

“Hey, baby. You wanna take a walk?”

Words fail him. Freddy ducks down into the shelter of his jacket and hurries inside.


	2. Chapter 2

“C’mon! A night on credit and I’ll have the money for you in the morning. Please, Yolanda.” Freddy bites his bottom lip, trying to smile as he leans over the front desk, pleading with the girl who had taken his money on his first night in town.

Yolanda shakes her head. “Nuh uh. No way. My daddy’ll kill me.”

“It’s not like anyone else has taken the room. Please, I got no place else to go.”

“That ain’t my problem.” Yolanda looks over his shoulder. “Can I help you, ma’am?”

“Looking for a room.” The next customer announces.

Freddy’s heart hits the waterlogged soles of his sneakers. Yolanda jerks her head, indicating that he should really stop bitching and go pick up his shit. He drags his feet, still waiting to acclimatise to his permanently wet socks. The rain has barely let up these past two days and neither has he; between here and Time Square he must have canvassed every corner store, arcade, cinema and seedy restaurant in the city, and despite some places saying that they’d think about it he still doesn’t have a job and Holdaway’s done what he can but none of his contacts have anything open till next week.

A week. In the rain. Freddy could find a trash can to sleep in, and then he could show up to his first day on the job smelling like dogshit.

He pretends he has things to pack and stomps around the room for five minutes, triple checking under the mattress to make sure he hasn’t miraculously acquired another t-shirt. Or a stack of bills. He’s down to his last five dollars, which is dinner tonight and something to eat tomorrow.

Freddy leaves his room, pack slung over his shoulder, and hands his key back to Yolanda. “See you round.”

She barely looks up, too busy gossiping with the new customer to notice him go. Freddy sneers at her as he backs up and waits for her to look him in the eye so she can tell him to fuck off. But it’s not her who looks up, it’s the new customer. A middle aged woman who’s skin is just the right colour of nothing in particular that Freddy can’t tell if she’s supposed to be Black or white or Mexican or whatever. Her clothes are thrift shop but her bearing is one of utmost self confidence and her eyes are fierce and dark.

First he thinks she’s going to cuss him out. But she doesn’t know his parents or his teachers of nobody, she can’t do shit to him.

He’s wrong though. She laughs. “Looks like you pissed this li’l chicken stick off, Yolanda.”

“Ignore him, he’s a drifter.” Yolander assures her. “Get out of here, Freddy!”

“Freddy?” The older woman purrs. “Hmm, that’s cute. That’s real cute.”

Freddy’s body stiffens on impact with her smile. It’s not exactly unpleasant but it’s not quite right either. His spidey sense is tingling as she steps towards him.

“I ain’t ever had one as cute as you before.”

A glance as Yolanda’s worry stricken face tells Freddy everything he needs to know. “I should go.”

“Out on the streets? All alone? Streets is no place for a boy like you on a night like tonight. Stay a while.” She lays a hand on his shoulder and Freddy can see the chips in her nail polish. “I promise I’ll be gentle.”

“Leave him be, Shaundra.” Yolanda barks.

But Freddy’s stuck trying to decide if she’s pretty, and if she’s not pretty if it makes a lick of difference. This would be very easy if she were pretty, and she’s not exactly ugly, but she’s probably as old as his mum. Except Freddy doesn’t have a mum anymore, hasn’t since he left Bakersfield.

Is she prettier than the rain is dry?

“What would I…what do you want me to do?” Freddy’s voice hasn’t sounded so weak since he was in kindergarten.

Shaundra shrugs. “We could have a little fun, maybe smoke a little. And for your troubles I’ll let you take the floor tonight as well as paying up so you can crash tomorrow. How’s that sound?”

Better than the sidewalk. Better than pushing through the crowds of girls dressed up for no one in particular trying to spot a place he can hunker down without having to fight for it. He could go down the street to the movie theatre and catch a late show, then stretch out on the abandoned seats in the middle block and spend the night there.

Yolanda is sat tense by the check in log. She’s gotta be a good couple of years younger than Freddy but she’s seen this scene play out before. She knows what happens next. She fucking knows.

Freddy nods his agreement and Shaundra beams at him. “Good boy. Come on now.” She doesn’t stop to clear it with Yolanda and Freddy remembers the couple he heard fucking on his first night here.

“Strip.” Shaundra command, when the door has swung closed behind them and she’s settled herself on the mattress. “But do it real slow.”

Freddy doesn’t think he could do it fast if he tried. His jacket and singlet peel off his back at a snail’s pace but when he reaches for the button on his jeans his hands are shaking too hard to make them do what needs to be done. His throat catches and he ducks his head, screaming at himself not to cry. When he looks up Shaundra is still smiling at him passively. “You take your time, baby. You take all the time you need.”

The floor in this room can’t have been cleaned in months, and Freddy wakes with one side of his face painted black from the dust and city borne grime gathered there. He’s cold and stiff, covered by his jacket and shirt, twenty-two dollars clutched in his hand. Shaundra’s still asleep, so it’s gotta be early, the light filtering in under the curtain weak and he can’t hear the tumble driers running downstairs. Freddy wishes he could go back to sleep but his hips are killing him. He sits up, reaching for his shoes as quietly as he can. Somewhere will be open, he can go grab some coffee and come back when the room is his again.

Yolanda is napping at the front desk. Freddy knows that her dad is supposed to stop by and relieve her at seven. He shakes her awake and hands her the money to cover the room for another night. “Told you I’d have it by morning.”

“Yeah.” Yolanda stares blearily at the small pile of bills in her hand. “Listen, Freddy. About Shaundra, I’m-“

“It’s fine.” Freddy cute her off.” Really. Just…forget about it, ok?”

She looks up at him with a sleepy sort of pity that makes his skin itch. “You gotta be careful getting into that shit.”

He shrugs and signs on the line to confirm his check in that evening. He doesn’t have to think about last night ever again if he doesn’t want to. A one time thing born of desperate circumstance. His stomach growls as he heads out onto the street, and he still only has five dollars to his name.

“Good news!” Holdaway slips into the seat opposite Freddy. Turns out he opens early on Saturdays. It also turns out that it’s a Saturday.

Freddy looks up from the burger he got himself instead of a real breakfast. “You got a job for me?”

“Sure have. I know a guy down on fifty seventh street, runs a cab company. He says he can hook you up.”

Freddy’s shoulders drop. “I don’t have a licence.”

“I figured. Don’t sweat it, they need someone to operate their switchboard for a few weeks while their usual girl is in the hospital. You can start today.”

“Today as in…?”

“Today as in you best finish that burger real quick and start walking cuz they’re expecting your ass at nine.”

Ninety eighth to fifty seventh street is a long walk. Freddy glances at the clock on the back wall and runs the numbers. He can make it. Just. “I owe you one!” He tells Holdaway as he barrels out the door, still chewing the last of his burger.

“You think I don’t know that?” Holdaway calls after him, But Freddy is already half running south, the ghosts of the night before already behind him.

The cab headquarters is a large garage with an office attached. Freddy sticks his head through the gaping hole in the side of the building and skips around the cars heading out for the morning as he makes for the desk at the back. “S’cuse me, you Josh?”

The balding Jewish guy in a jacket that makes him look twice as wide as he is barely looks up from his paper, sucking on a cigarette like it’s mother’s milk. “Who’s asking.”

“Freddy Newandyke. Holdaway sent me.”

“So you’re the kid that’s supposed to help us while Jeannie recovers from her accident.”

“I guess.”

“You guess?” Josh laughs and squints up at Freddy. “Jesus, how old are you?”

“Old enough.”

“You got any experience with a switchboard?”

“No.” Freddy replies before he can think to lie. “But it’s not like it’s hard, right?”

Josh shrugs, closing the paper and slamming an empty coffee mug down on top of it to keep it from blowing away. “Can’t be if Jeannie Spelling is any good at it. C’mon, I’ll show you the ropes.”

Operating a switchboards turns out to be boring as shit but not quite so mind numbing that he can switch off entirely. The customers get shirty if he’s anything less than saccharine with them and the drivers are surly no matter what. He has to fight against the revving of car engine in the main hall and drivers yelling at each other and the noise from the street echoing through the garage. After twelve hours he’s about ready to fall to the floor and sleep under one of the cabs. Which would still be a better night than the last. Freddy squashes the thought before it can morph into memory and hands the headset over to the girl who’ll work the graveyard shift till he comes in the next day.

When he’s collected his wages for the day, Freddy looks round the garage like he expects to see a familiar face waiting for him. He’s met with an ocean of yellow taxis and their drivers who might as well share the same ruddy face for all the good it would do him.

He hasn’t had cause to speak to any of the drivers in the past twelve hours, but that changes when he turns out of the garage and runs smack into Travis Bickle.

“Woah, watch where you’re going.” The softness of Travis’s voice doesn’t match his scowl. Only a few days in New York and Freddy can already tell that his accent is out of place. Not that this city ain’t full to bursting with out of towners. He apologises and tries to brush past him, but Travis moves fast to block him off. When their eyes meet Travis is smiling and it makes the hairs on the back of Freddy’s neck stand on end.

“Travis, leave the kid alone, would’ya?”

Travis says nothing, but he steps aside to let Freddy pass. Looking over his shoulder, Freddy sees the straight back, wide shoulders, clicked-back hair of his rescuer. “Hey, you drove me up to Harlem the other night.”

The cab driver, the same one Freddy had met straight off the bus, cocks his head. “Guess that’s true. How you getting on, you got a job?”

“Yeah, I’m running your switchboard.”

The cab driver laughs, ignoring Travis staring him down. “No shit. So you’re Freddy. Call me Larry, and this creepy sonofabitch is Travis.”

Freddy shakes Larry’s hand but doesn’t offer Travis the same courtesy. Travis doesn’t seem to mind though, he doesn’t even move. The lights from the board hanging over the front of the garage seem to glance right off him, refracting outwards to soften the edges of the night.

“Nice to meet you Larry. I’ll be seeing you.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

The walk back uptown to the hotel is mercifully dry, but it’s damn near ten when he makes it through the door. Yolanda’s mom is on duty tonight, and the hallway echoes with the tinny sound of her television. Freddy separates twenty-two dollars from his wages and pays up for the night. When he gets to his room he finds it empty and perfectly tidy, and he wishes he could be anywhere else but here.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are love!
> 
> Come find me on [tumblr](https://jeffersonhairpie.tumblr.com/) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/rixywrites)


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